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Another lovely soap from those clever people at Soape

If the best things in life are free then Soape's 'Strawberry Milk' cream soap should be absolutely fantastic. Not only was my piece of this handmade soap a free sample, it was one I didn't even know I was getting.

Online retailer Soape offer free 25gram samples of all of their handmade soaps; all you do is pay the £2.00 postage and choose up to four samples. Now I am learning which ones I like best, I choose a few samples at the same time as I buy my favourite full size soaps and the delivery charge remains £2.00; if you are buying from the website it's silly not to add some free samples. Whether this one ended up in the parcel by accident or as a generous extra, I don't know but when I gave the packaged sample a quick sniff I knew I was going to like it.

To be honest I didn't really fancy trying the cream soaps and have been working my way through the glycerine and olive oil soaps instead so I didn't know what to expect under the paper. The full size bars come in cellophane but the samples are wrapped in brown paper, secured with a little sticker that tells you which soap is contained within. To me the description 'cream soap' conjures up to me something pale in colour and I expected this to be a pale pink colour so I was surprised to find that it was a semi translucent browny-red colour. Althoiugh the soap pictured here on Dooyoo gives the impression that it is quite light in colour, the colours of these hand made soaps does vary and my piece must have been cut from the darker part.

Before use the soap has a pleasant strawberry scent which is mild and natural; it's not the sharp intense smell of just sliced fresh strawberries but more like a strawberry milkshake as the name would imply. When the soap is wet and lathered it takes on a new spicy element - a bit like mild black pepper; it's an interesting combination and really quite unusual. After showering I find that there's a subtle strawberry scent left on the skin but the spiciness disappears.

I've been particularly impressed with how well Soape's glycerine and olive oil soaps lather up, especially as they don't use those artificial ingredients that are generally used to boost the lathering power of soap. This cream soap lathers just as well and the lather feels rich and luxurious. After rinsing the soap off my skin feels clean and refreshed, and moisturised too. Soape say that the cream soaps contain additional coconut oils and shea butter and I did think that this soap seemed even richer than the olive oil soaps I had already tried.

While I've been very happy with this product from Soape, I don't think it will be climbing to the top of my list of favourites but only because there are scents I like better. A full size bar (100g) of this Strawberry Milk cream soap is priced at £2.80 and I would rather spend that kind of money on one of the fragrances I really love, rather than something I just like.

If you do like the sound of this product, or wish to see what other fragrances there are take a look at the website (www.soape.com). At the time of writing there is a 30% discount for all purchases for one week only.

Soape do not use ingredients that have been tested on animals and all of its products are vegan friendly.